


the sharp act of surrender

by atiredonnie



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Character Study, Gen, relentless introspection i’m afraid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:34:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25659046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atiredonnie/pseuds/atiredonnie
Summary: Hilda has better things to do with her Friday morning than watch as a girl bleeds to death.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	the sharp act of surrender

**Author's Note:**

> i love hilda valentine goneril very much, so take a short oneshot on her being a desperate and miserable coward. this is how i express my love folks

It’s hot out.

It’s so, so fucking hot out.

It’s desperate out, air sticky with moisture and the smell of salt burning Hilda’s nose and squinted eyes. The sun is utterly unfaltering - a bastion of white heat and light, and sweat is already soaking the thin layers of fabric separating Hilda from the sky. Fucking Hanneman just had to drag them all the way out to the Rhodos Coast, because apparently the new professor and her gang of Eagles had completely purged the much closer and entirely more temperate Red Canyon of bandits. So instead Hilda had to cling onto the back of a terrifying wyvern for three hours, which would be fine if she at least got to wrap herself vice-like around someone solid and gorgeous like Claude, or soft and sweet like Marianne, but no, she got saddled with Lorenz, inhaling the scent of his horrible fake rose perfume for half a fucking day. It is, Hilda thinks, sunshine clinging to her skin like a moth to the flame, entirely unfair. 

It’s also entirely unfair that the open expanse of beach Hilda is currently traversing is so - well. So open. Because now everyone can become intimately acquainted with the sight of her in battle, the intricate movement of her axe, the way she doesn’t just cut relentlessly and unquestioningly through the swathes of doglike enemies that march at her with sloppy rage. Anyone and everyone is capable of noticing the delicate twist of her foot as she pivots to dig a sharp iron corner into the soft skull of an inexperienced archer, the undying nature of her grip on the handle even when an enemy’s Thoron burns away at her knuckles. The chances of someone looking at Hilda Valentine Goneril wielding an ugly, rusted axe like an extension of her being and thinking “wow, this girl is meant for something other than looking pretty and marrying rich” are too damn high, in Hilda’s opinion, so she takes care to let the edge of some wayward lance scrape intimately across her shoulder before sending her axe home, a wet metal kiss in between shattered ribs. 

Hilda pulls back, a languid, gross noise of detachment from bone and gristle echoing in her ears as she dislodges her weapon. Gross, she thinks plainly, and wants to rub off the blood and guts on her skirt, but she just got Ignatz to do her laundry for her and she doesn’t want to request it twice in a day on account of undue suspicion, and-

And. Lysithea’s scream splits the air, a desperate howl, animalistic with pain, and Hilda turns to see the small girl previously covering her back with Miasma after Miasma collapse onto the sand, a soft exhalation of breath amidst her desperate cries. She’s skewered, Hilda thinks dispassionately, half dark with revulsion and half tender with unearned sympathy. Because really, Lysithea should’ve been watching her own back, but Hilda is not immune to the desperate cries of a wailing fifteen year old as her hands uselessly flutter to her ruined stomach. Hilda’s vulnerary begins to pulse in her pocket, and Hilda can just imagine pressing it to Lysithea’s parted lips, watching her flesh knit itself back together long enough for Lysithea to stagger to the sidelines, long enough for Lysithea to last the three grueling hours back to Garreg Mach until Professor Manuela worked her magic. 

And.

And Hilda can imagine that, and the look of obvious repressed adoration in Lysithea’s eyes, and Claude’s approving smile, and the sweet, slight nod of Marianne’s head as the two of them helped load Lysithea’s unconscious form onto a wyvern’s back, and the thought of that sends Hilda fucking reeling with undisguised anger and shame. Because if she does that everyone will look at Hilda, if only for a moment, like she is something good, like she is something dependable, like she is anything other than a girl who blows on her nails under the table and breaks open skulls like rotten, exploding eggs with no care for the directions remnants of brain fly in, as long as they do not end up on her shirt. 

Hilda stares Lysithea in the eye, a desperate, long look of challenge, as Lysithea gapes up in indescribable agony, flopping on the ground like a fish out of water, limbs flailing, eyes clamped shut as petulant, miserable tears squeeze themselves from slotted eyelids. She is pathetic, utterly and undeniably so, and the thought of her continued wailing makes Hilda want to die, right then and there, from grief and pain and shame and all of those messy things she hates like a parasite in her open form. 

But Hilda does not die. 

Rather, she looks down on Lysithea, not a single scratch on her but the one wayward, intentional mark on her shoulder from that lance, and drinks the vulnerary, glaring down Lysithea all the while. 

It burns the whole way down, like holiness, like fire, like spite itself, and Lysithea gapes in betrayal-agony-desperation-torment for a few visceral seconds until her violet eyes flutter shut and her fingers come limply away from the ravaged hole of her stomach. 

Hilda looks down at her flayed body and feels nothing at all. 

For a second, the space surrounding Hilda is empty, nothing but dried blood at her feet and the unconscious, stifled breaths of Lysithea’s tiny form, curled up and leaking vulnerability as well as blood from the openness of her wound. Hilda reels on the balls of her feet, air and light and somehow the vastness of the nothing, and in a split second Hilda understands, fingers scraping at bleeding air. 

People die all the time. People die all the fucking time, and no one cares, because caring is beyond their prerogative. Not every death means something, and for every hero buried in the ground with flowers embalming their slaughtered corpse there are a hundred bodies in an unmarked grave. Hilda knows there will be war, soon, she smells it like the goddamn inescapable nature of the salt and the sea, and she knows how war goes, or at least can make a pretty fucking good guess. What is it? Is it people like Hilda, simpering, useless brats who don’t deserve their place and stance, going to battle while next to them the innocents bleed and die over ideals Hilda doesn’t even want to understand? Or is it Hilda running for her life, running until she tires of the act of running in itself, because how you die doesn’t matter, and Hilda wants to live. Life isn’t bliss, just living, and the smiles, the respect garnered, the causes invested in, just lead to more dead fucking heroes. 

Hilda does not want to be a hero. She hates the thought of it more than she hates the sensation of holiness on her tongue and the sand lining the skin beneath her nails. Heroism is for people who are brave, and smart, and kind, and don’t mind dying. And Hilda is weak. And Hilda will not die. 

And then Marianne is rushing past her, already halfway through a heal, and Lysithea is bundled up into soft arms, and all Hilda can do is look and think that all of this bravery will be rotting away under six feet of dirt very soon.


End file.
